


The Wizarding Hours (with validation and hot chocolate)

by AlyssiaInWonderland



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Character Study, Childhood Trauma, Coping Mechanisms, Dissociation, Don’t copy to another site, Draco validates Harry's trauma, Gen, Harry Has PTSD - Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Hot Chocolate, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Insomnia, Nightmares, Post-War, Processing Trauma, Prompt Fic, Reflection, Teacher Draco Malfoy, Teacher Harry Potter, idk how to tag this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-25
Updated: 2019-07-25
Packaged: 2020-07-19 18:27:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19978534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlyssiaInWonderland/pseuds/AlyssiaInWonderland
Summary: This is a fic based on the prompt "Harry feels bad that he's more haunted by the abuse he experienced as a child than the war. He ends up having someone, preferably Draco, notice an offhand comment/reference to the abuse, and they are upset and angry on his behalf and validate his trauma. He doesn't break down but does come away feeling like his trauma might be valid. I just want someone validating Harry!"Or - Harry has a nightmare, makes hot chocolate, and is validated by Draco Malfoy (of all people).





	The Wizarding Hours (with validation and hot chocolate)

It takes Harry a precious few seconds to remember that he is, in fact, a wizard.

“Lumos.” He whispers the incantation so quietly it was barely spoken, but the years when he struggled with non-verbal spellcasting are long gone, so it’s mostly immaterial.

His eyes dart around the room - reassuring flagstone, red and gold themed furnishings embellishing the cool curved walls. He stretches his arms up high, to light the floor so he can reach his slippers. If it means his fingers brush through the phantom ceiling of a tiny, cramped cupboard, that’s not his intent beyond incidental alignment of that outcome and seeing where he kicked his fluffy muggle shoes last night.

He flicks his wand, and the light floats up. It hovers in the ceiling, bright and white. It feels like one of the LED bulbs Aunt Petunia refused to get, because the harsher lighting made her foundation look too dark for her neck. He smiles, involuntarily - one of the tiny smirks that always, inevitably, got him in trouble, because he’s never learned to know better than that. He still isn’t sure why she didn’t just get a better matching foundation. Of course, the day he said as much, did not go well. He’s always known that there is something in him that refuses to do the sensible thing, to shut up and put up. He thinks it’s the Gryffindor in him, or maybe just the insistent rebel.

It’s the same attitude that carried him through Umbridge’s reign; through the war, even. He likes to pretend that his talking-back was good, or at least brave. That his compulsion to disobey, to point out the obvious and the true, does more to improve situations than devolve them. Sometimes, on a very good day, he believes it.

He pulls on his slippers from where they’re lying, against the trunk at the foot of his bed. The foe glass opposite is blissfully clear of eyes, save his mother’s that rest in his face. He rubs a hand muzzily over it, brushes his continually messy hair out of his eyes, and shuffles to the window.

He has to wrestle with it to get it open, because he’s opening it the muggle way, not with alohamora, but the satisfaction as it swings out, a breeze and a sprinkle of rain rushing over his skin, is worth it. The feeling of fresh air, the sight of the grounds, lit up in streaks from various lit windows in the castle, is restorative. He breathes it in, relishing in the sensation of freedom that it brings. He’s at Hogwarts. He’s home.

The claustrophobia that’s been creeping steadily closer into his mind, suffocating him, is blown away in the scent of pine and firelight. Nights like this, where he dreams of locked cupboards and cruel, mocking tones, he itches for flight. His broom rests where it always does, against his bookshelf. Well loved and well used. He thinks of Ginny, and her skill and her sharp, exhilarated laughter when she manages a particularly difficult manouvre. He loved her for it - loves her still, even though they have both moved on since the war ended and their lives continued, became solid and real. She’s out there, somewhere. On tour with her team, taking the championships by storm as she was always meant to.

Ron still plays, in the Auror team, and Hermione - she tries, and she cheers him on, and it means a lot to Ron, and to Harry too. He’s fairly sure Hermione regularly has moments where she is horrified that she’s actively supporting a game analogous to rugby or football in the muggle world. Her parents are dentists, after all, and she’s one of the only people Harry’s met, muggleborn or not, who is still scandalised by the lack of quidditch mouthguards despite advanced healing magic being readily accessible.

He manages a small laugh, as he remembers Hermione’s attempt to form a petition for better safety gear, and the bemusement on Ron’s face as she explained what she meant. It’s cathartic, to feel humour and companionship. Happiness banishes many demons; dementors taught him that, well.

Abruptly, he realises he’s absolutely starving.

He does that a lot - gets so absorbed in his work, in grading essays or planning lessons for his DADA students, that he forgets to eat. Years of acclimating to an erratic, insubstantial food supply were entrenched deeply enough that not even Hogwarts’ regular meal structure could quite remove their effects. Between the house elves who keep the kitchen well stocked, and the freedom of night-wandering gained as a Professor (and that still sounds peculiar to his ears, no matter how often he repeats it to himself in an attempt to make it seem real), he’s kept in midnight snacks quite happily.

He’s hungrier on the nights when he gets the nightmares.

It’s a dreadful, frustrating sort of irony that he’s faced the avada kedavra twice in his lifetime, has been quite literally tortured, and seen the people he loves hurting and dying, and yet his nightmares are filled with the mundane happenings of his childhood.

It’s categorically fucked up, he thinks, that the times he dreams of flashes of green light and his parents, of Remus and Tonks and pain so vivid he can feel it when he wakes, he doesn’t so much as shake. Because now, with fragments of the oppressive scent and taste of dish-soap and scrubbed raw fingers, he’s struggling to hide his body’s tremors as he makes his way to the door of his room. He clenches the hand not holding his wand, and the shaking fades as he walks briskly through the corridors, his light following him.

The paintings on the walls murmur, irritated by his light, so he dims it as much as he dares to assuage their grumbling discontent. His legs know the way to the kitchens by heart, aided by repetition and frequent visits to Neville in the Hufflepuff staff rooms. By the time he’s turning into the kitchen, past the stacked barrels, he feels almost calm. Something about movement with intent is soothing to him; especially if the intent is based around his own, independent impulses. He doesn’t think he’ll ever stop seeking freedom, even in the safest of places and tiniest of ways.

In the kitchen, there’s always warmth. Summer or winter, no matter how the elements chose to ravage the castle and it’s grounds; without fail, the kitchens hold a pleasant cosiness bourne of the aftermath of bustling purpose and intent to care for the hundreds of students who live within the walls. 

The narrow corridor Harry pads softly through, passes several pantries and turnings, which Harry is often tempted to explore. Tonight, though, he has a purpose. It thrums through him, his mind planning out the perfect concoction. He hates to admit it, and thinks many people he knows would hate the idea, but he often feels some measure of peace when cooking. It’s in making something for himself out of set ingredients; following a recipe to produce something that can precipitate a change in himself or others on consumption. A little like potions. 

In the past, it wasn’t always an activity that brought such joy - the hand not holding his wand loosely, clenches reflexively as he recalls a faded scar on it’s back from sizzling bacon fat one morning, aged seven and too short for the stove. But now, he feels something akin to happiness. Cooking affords him some control; over his food and his mood alike. He can choose to make what he wishes, however he wants. Decadence abounds when he does this, purely because it can. Another, tangible reminder of how his circumstances have changed, far beyond what his younger self could possibly have imagined.

He knows that his mother’s eyes are in his, and that his potions skill is not hers. But he likes to think that maybe, that skill translated in him, into simple, muggle cooking. That he can now have for himself, not for Vernon and Dudley while Petunia sniffs about her diets. He has no real way to know for sure that Lily was a better cook than Petunia - though it isn’t hard to be a better cook than his aunt. It’s not something he’s ever really thought to ask about, and now, almost all the people who could tell him are gone.

Still, it’s something in him, and he’s been told so often that he’s made up of various component parts that this must be something in the jigsaw, from Lily or from James, and either way he’s grateful and content with his outcome.

He traces his fingers over the stone, the whorls of them catching subtly on the smoothness as he turns left, and the archway opens out into a spacious kitchen. There’s a large wooden table and benches in the centre, with a cooking space and cupboards crammed around the edges of the room.

He turns off his lumos, and lets the glowing fires in the chandeliers, candles and torches light his work.

The stove is easy enough to use, and he fetches a pan, cocoa powder, sugar and cinnamon from the lower cupboards. He sets the pan to heat, and moves to the cupboard tagged blue, to mark it as having a cooling charm. Out comes the milk and cream and a block of cooking chocolate. He pours the milk into a mug - fired deep burgundy - to measure it out before passing it to the pan. Scoops of the ingredients, and a sprinkling of cinnamon later, the kitchen smells comforting enough that he feels up to whipping the cream with a charm. It’s complex magic, but it goes well, even if the peaks are not quite perfectly twisted.

He pours in the rich, velvety chocolate mixture, and levitates the cream to sit perfectly on top. He uses his wand to slice curls of chocolate onto the cream, and dusts it with more cocoa, cinnamon and sugar to complete the picture. He’d be instagram ready, if the internet worked here; a lamentable oversight in the design of the school, especially considering the free access to time turners back when it was built.

It’s only after he’s set the dishes to wash themselves in the sink that he notices he has an audience.

He picks up his mug, cupping it between both hands, and slides it across the table so he can sit opposite his watcher.

“I didn’t think you would even know where the kitchen is.” Harry comments, casually. Like this is some kind of every-day occurrence.

Draco Malfoy looks up from the small mug of conjured, foul-smelling coffee he’s nursing, and narrows his eyes.

“I work here too, you know.” His tone is carefully non-hostile.

They haven’t overlapped much, for all that they technically work together.

It’s possibly due to the fact that they each teach and inhabit very different sections of the castle; it’s also plausible that they have each, only semi-intentionally, cultivated routines that avoid the other.

They have both grown, and changed, since their days colliding at school, and in the war. Harry still remembers Draco trying to cover for him, back in the mansion, and he remembers how drawn and pale he had been when his family was under the sway of the Death Eaters. It’s not enough - perhaps it never will be enough - to fully remove the fact that he acted on the side of the Death Eaters. But Harry is, now, more conscious that Draco was brought up in a world and an environment where he had very little opportunity to learn better, or make his own choices.

He’s also seen how, in his freedom, Draco led his family’s cooperation with authorities, and thrown himself into teaching Potions with a fervour and gentleness that he cannot have possible learned from anyone but his own conscience. He’s also heard the rumours that Draco offers guidance to any purebloods still struggling to change, leveraging the Malfoy name and fortune to help them in a way that is too political for Harry to particularly approve of, but too useful to snub. It doesn’t change the past, but perhaps there is hope for the future. And so Harry isn’t completely uncomfortable in this conversation; Draco seems more awkward than Harry is, at any rate.

“Potions going well?” Harry asks, half obligation and half to test the boundaries of this new interaction.

“Not too bad. Can’t complain. Though I’m fairly sure the number of accidental explosions in the dungeons has gone up since I took over.” Draco looks like he’s trying to scowl, but the amusement at the collective incompetence of young students is too strong, so it ends up making a smirk that isn’t even entirely egotistical.

“If I didn’t know better, I’d say that comment was almost self-deprecating.” Harry comments, cautiously.

“I’m glad you know better, then.” Draco’s faint smile belies his attempt at coldness.

Harry hums in reply, and licks some of the cream away, to get at the hot chocolate. He can feel Draco’s eyes watching him as he drinks, so he keeps going, and meet’s Draco’s curious gaze. Draco looks down hurriedly, coughing, and Harry has to restrain a laugh.

This peculiar awkwardness, and the normality of it, is grounding in a way he didn’t know he needed.

“Can I help you?” Harry tries his best to keep the humour out of his voice, but is certain he hasn’t succeeded.

“What?” Draco blinks, and swirls his coffee mug in circles over the wood. “Oh. It’s just...I had no idea you could make something like that.”

“It’s just hot chocolate.” Harry dismisses the implication of skill easily.

“I’ve hardly seen any wizard make something by hand that well except in Potions. Normally hot chocolate that looks so nice just appears. By house elf, or transfiguration.” Draco is leaning forward a little, his eyes sharp with curiosity. It’s a much better look on him than the sneers of his school days, or the drawn horror of the war.

“That’s your problem, then.” Harry articulates, careful in entering such an implicitly loaded field of conversation. “This was learned the muggle way. I only added the magical steps later. It’s a work in progress.”

“I see.” Harry isn’t sure if he imagined the disappointment in Draco’s tone.

“I could teach you, if you like. Some night. I don’t often sleep well.” Harry curses himself silently for offering. Draco is probably easily startled; having coffee in the night is rarely a recipe for someone calm enough to accept invitations of tentative friendship.

“That...would be nice.” Draco says, and Harry hides his surprise with another sip of his drink.

Draco’s still nursing his coffee, and fidgeting. Harry knows that look.

“Did you want to ask me something else?” He watches Draco, patiently.

“Where did you learn it? Why? It’s not like you spent that much time in the purely muggle world. You must have been very young when you learned this, and I’d have thought your mo- your guardians, sorry, would have made it for you? Did they teach you?” Draco seems legitimately curious, so Harry doesn’t see the harm in answering him truthfully.

“Oh, no. This was entirely self-taught. Sometimes, for a treat, I’d make myself some - at night, so nobody could bother me - and I’d take it back into my cupboard to help me sleep. The habit sort of stuck, I guess.”

“Huh.” Draco pauses to take in the information - though Harry isn’t sure why something so simple takes quite so much processing time. “I apologise; I must have mis-heard.”

“What?” Harry’s feeling awkward now. Has he said something particularly damning? Was the word treat some pureblood code for something horrifically rude or vulgar? Or some other combination of phrases that his muggle upbringing kept him ignorant of?

“You said - I thought you said ‘my cupboard’.” Draco says, hastily, flushing a light shade of pink. “But of course, I must have mis-heard, and I didn’t mean to think - to think or imply that all muggles live like house elves, I’m far past that, I just - it really sounded like-”

“It’s alright.” Harry fights the urge to laugh and gape a little, at Draco’s fumbling, stammering attempt to address what he’d heard. “I did say cupboard. You’re not hallucinating anti-muggle propaganda, I promise.”

“Oh.” Draco blinks at him. “Then - but I know muggles live in normal rooms and houses. Just non-magical ones. Why did you say ‘my cupboard’?”

“I lived with my aunt, uncle and cousin. They gave me the cupboard under the stairs, as my room.” Harry explains. His pulse is thrumming loudly in his ears, which is beyond aggravating when he’s trying to be matter of fact. It’s not like he has to justify himself.

Everyone seems far past thinking he’s the poster child for privilege and glamour because of his wizardly inheritance, even if he’s touted as The Chosen One still, in some circles. It’s not like the cupboard was terrible. He could stretch without hitting his fingers until he was nine. He shouldn’t have to feel ashamed; doesn’t know why he does. He hates the feeling of guilt pooling in him at having to explain his past. It belongs to a story that isn’t his; this feeling that makes his skin crawl and his breath light and fast.

“They gave you the cupboard? I thought you grew up in a normal muggle house? Surely there were enough rooms?” Harry can’t read Draco’s tone. It’s curious, but there’s something behind it that he can’t quite wrap his head around. It feels strange, jarring against his voice.

“Well, there were only three. And the third was used for Dudley’s stuff. It’s really not a big deal. And I got the spare room once I started going to Hogwarts - it’s easier to control mail access there, especially if you lock it and have window bars. Unless you have an owl.” Harry’s torn between pouring out words to try and make the questions, that uncomfortable tone of curiosity, stop, and begging himself to shut up, because the creeping feeling of wrongness is pressing down on him consistently enough he can barely taste his hot chocolate.

“What. The. Fuck!” Draco’s shout jerks Harry out of himself, and he realises he’s drunk almost half of his mug on autopilot.

“Could you keep your voice down? I don’t want the portraits to get angry at us for swearing where kids could overhear.” Harry feels a lot calmer than he expected to, given Draco’s outburst. Then again, it doesn’t seem directed at him, exactly, or anyone else in the room. It’s just an expression of emotion. Expression is safe when it doesn’t have a target, and he knows he’s not Draco’s target anymore.

“Harry.” Draco’s finally abandoned his mug. His hands are twisting around each other before he presses his palms firmly to the table. His fingers are trembling. “Tell me you’re fucking with me.”

Harry would call Draco dramatic, if he didn’t think it would make the situation worse.

“Draco, for Merlin’s sake, you need to calm down. I’m not fucking with you, it’s okay. If you’re this on edge, why the hell are you drinking coffee!” Harry’s mostly successful at not raising his voice.

“Harry - this is not the fuck okay.” Draco sounds like he’s just gargled firewhiskey and is midway through an asthma attack.

“Seriously, you sound awful, no offence, I can get Madam Pomfrey-”   
  
“No!” Draco’s arm snaps forward to grab Harry’s as he starts to stand. “No, I don’t need that, I’m just…” He takes a deep breath, and then another, and slowly, his harsh grip fades, and he settles back into his seated position. His hands curl back around his coffee, which is now likely only lukewarm.

Harry silently casts a warming charm on both their drinks, and Draco looks up to cast him a slightly strained smile.

“So. What the hell was that about?” Harry asks, cautiously.

“I’d like to ask you some questions, if that’s alright.” Draco says, his voice dripping with deliberate calm.

“Okay.” Harry isn’t sure where this is headed, but this interaction as spiralled far beyond his expectations, so he’s left waiting.

“You lived in a cupboard. And then a room that was locked, and had bars on the windows.” Draco’s not really looking at him, more through him, but Harry doesn’t see why he can’t answer, even if the weirdness crawls through him again. If it helps Draco calm down, he can deal.

“Yes.”   
  
“Every summer?”

“Well, uh, yeah, but not the whole time. Usually I’d go somewhere else after the main chunk of it, and what with our sixth year-”

“Did you tell anyone?” Draco’s calm is fading, a strange kind of sharpness bleeding through. Harry realises with a dizzying mental shift, that the emotion is concern. Draco Malfoy, who did his best to bully him mercilessly, is worried.

“Not really. Draco, this isn’t helping you feel better.” Harry watches, as Draco seems to take a moment to process, like before. Then he seems to subside.

“You know that wasn’t okay to do to you, right, Harry?” His intonance, his wording, sounds absurdly like Hermione when he’s being gentle. It still feels wrong, like an added layer of unreality on top of the aftermath of a nightmare and the sickly slide he feels when he remembers things from back then.

“Draco. I’ve been cursed with all the Unforgivables at least once. A cupboard honestly doesn’t even rate on the scale of fucked up that has been my life.” Harry says, flatly.

“Maybe it should.” It doesn’t sound like a retort. It’s confusing all the same. He frowns, and Draco presses his lips together firmly, before taking a small breath and elaborating. “Listen. I know - actually, I don’t. I’ve got no fucking clue how messed up the War was for you. Let alone all your ridiculous school year adventures - it’s a miracle any of us managed to learn enough to teach, by the way.” Draco smiles, genuinely this time, and Harry laughs. As ever, the humour eases the tense feeling in his chest.

“I have no idea how Hermione kept up her work ethic. It’s a miracle any of us besides her even managed our NEWTs, honestly.” Harry says. Once, that would have been an insult, to Draco. Now, he just smiles back.

“What I’m trying to say, is that...your scale for messed up, is kind of broken. Like, is living in a cupboard way less horrific in a scalar sense than killing a basilisk? Yeah, sure. But you don’t say there’s no poison when someone’s only been exposed to one drop of the draught of living death. Just because some people have drunk more, doesn’t mean someone who has only had a drop isn’t also in danger. You know?”

“You’re making metaphors about potions and scales. You really are becoming an old Professor.” Harry says, because he needs time to figure out what Draco just said.

“Maybe so,” Draco smiles again - it’s still weird seeing Draco smiling. “But just...think about it, alright?”

“Yeah. I will.” Harry drinks the last of his hot chocolate, in lieu of anything else to do. He starts to stand, and hesitates. He doesn’t want to have to say something, make it more awkward after things have calmed back down, but-

“I won’t tell anyone.” Draco says, into the quiet. He’s not a Legilimens, but he may as well be, with that level of prescience.

“Thank you.” Harry sets his mug into the sink, and flicks his wand to make it wash itself up.

He turns in time to see Draco’s face as he drains his own mug.

“Yeah, I really need to teach you to make something better than that coffee.” Harry says, laughing a little. He pats Draco’s shoulder lightly on the way out. “See you some other insomnia night, Professor.”

He hears Draco’s protests regarding his coffee making abilities fade as he retraces his steps to his room.

As he walks, he considers what he’d said. He thinks he understands the point Draco had been getting at, with the potions example, even if it was atrociously melodramatic. On the scale of badness, even if you’ve experienced a ten, a one is still also bad.

He still feels uncomfortable, claiming his childhood as bad. Any time he tries, a dozen justifications and explanations spring into his mind, clamouring for attention. They range from the simple ‘you were normal, Dudley was spoiled, and Ron and Hermione were lucky’, to ‘you probably deserved it, your parents died because of you’. He usually does his best to ignore them. But it makes thinking of his childhood as even being on the scale of bad - tricky. He knows, objectively, that what he experienced wasn’t normal. Even without many real yardsticks, he could measure with no units and still come up feeling an inexplicable unsettled sensation. In so many ways, he thinks his ability to comprehend his childhood was best when he was living it. He remembers being so angry, back then. In between the long periods of dullness, of acceptance and survival, there were the bright, hot rages where he knew with intense clarity that it was wrong, that he deserved better. Now, he longs for that clarity. But he’s so tired of anger, and hatred. He’s seen enough of it in the War to last a lifetime. Now, he’s just...sad. Sad, and scared, because now that he’s finally safe, he can feel it without danger.

He goes through his routine, brushes his teeth (all Hermione’s positive influence there), and lies down in bed, still thinking.

His room in the castle is bigger than his one at Privet Drive was. It’s about the size of his bedroom in Grimmauld Place. He’s got access to food, and drink, and companionship. People don’t insult him or tell him he’s worthless, or make him do chores and keep him up to needle into until he disgusts them by crying. And maybe - it’s okay to feel bad that those things weren’t always the case.

It’s not the same as facing down death. But it still hurts. He can’t cry about it, he thinks maybe he never will be able to. But, perhaps, his nightmares - they’re not so unreasonable.

He falls asleep to the faint patter of rain on glass.

He doesn’t dream.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope this was enjoyable/good! Thank you to the person who kindly commissioned this, I hope it is what you hoped for!!!
> 
> As ever comments and kudos feed my dark soul ;p <3 Thanks for reading!


End file.
